“Yeah, the Gulf agrees with him, wouldn't you say?” said his partner. The Asian guy nodded.
“Wu and De Silver, right?” I said. “But it has been so long, fellers. I'm going to need some help. Which one's which? You're Wu, right?” I said, pointing at the guy who was about as Asian as spaghetti and meatballs. The real Wu was sitting in my chair, doing a good job of appearing constipated. I took a couple of steps toward my desk, which was bare except for a phone, an in-tray, an eraser, a mug stuffed with pens, and Wu's boots. “You mind?” Wu swung them off, stood, and then meandered around the other side, squaring up my in-tray with the side of the desk as he passed it. Accountants. The guy was so anal his shit probably came out symmetrical. I sat in my vacated chair. “Good of you to warm it up for me. Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?” I said, resting my chin on a pyramid of fingers.
“We told you we were going to keep an eye on you, Cooper,” said De Silver, his hands loose in front of him like door security before they start brawling. His head was even cocked at the tough-guy angle. I almost laughed, but then I thought I'd better not if I wanted my expenses for the past few weeks reimbursed, an amount close to two thousand bucks. And all of it on my government Visa.
“Yeah, I remember you saying that the last time. And what has that eye you've been sharing seen, exactly?”
Wu and De Silver exchanged a glance. De Silver nodded. Wu stepped forward and leaned over the desk. “Uncle Sam is not your private bank, soldier.” He produced a copy of the expenses form I'd filled in over the net when I was down in Florida and banged it on the desk. “One man does not consume two clam chowders, a basket of soft-shelled crabs, a couple of pounds of shrimp and scallops. And then there's the wine.”
“The meal was a legitimate expense incurred in the performance of my duty,” I said, parrying the thrust. The dinner at Salty's came back to me, unedited. Clare and I had discussed the Wright inquiry at length before going back to her house to play consenting adults. A snapshot of Clare came to mind. I saw her on top, holding me with both hands, the silver moonlight spilling through the bedroom window and flowing all over the bed.
“Something funny?” asked Wu.
“No, not funny.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
“None of your damn business, sonny,” I said.
Wu scowled.
De Silver droned on. “Also, there's the form itself. The DD 1351-2.”
“What about it?”
“You're AF, pal. That means you fill in forms with an AF prefix,” he said.
“The upshot is, Cooper, that we're not paying your expenses,” said Wu, more confident now.
“Y'know,” I said, “that's really great news.”
“And why's that?” said Wu, frowning, disappointed. Perhaps he'd been expecting that this bulletin might upset me.
“ ‘Cause I just got SPECAT orders from a four-star by the name of Howerton. You might have heard of him?”
Both nodded involuntarily, pure reaction to hearing the name of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I'm supposed to be leaving tomorrow,” I continued. “But in order to fulfill this latest contract I have with both the President as well as the Constitution of the United States, I'm going to need a card that isn't frozen because of nonpayment. But if you bold warriors are game enough to prevent me from following my orders, I can only admire you, and thank you. Means I'll live longer. Of course, I'll have to notify General Howerton about your problem with the number of soft-shelled crabs I ate as being the reason for my inability to follow his orders. I just know he'll want your serial numbers for verification purposes.” I pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and a pen from the mug. “Why don't you just write them down here? I'd hate to make a mistake and get a couple of innocent clerks castrated in your place.”
I watched as De Silver chewed something off the inside of his cheek. SPECAT orders were classified, which meant they couldn't ask to see them and I would be breaking the law even giving them a peek. I could be bluffing, but, then again, maybe I wasn't. Also leaving an unpleasant taste in their mouths was the realization that on the expense form I would submit at the SPECAT mission's conclusion, only the amounts column would be filled out. There'd be no receipts provided, no details recorded or able to be verified. This was the GAO's worst nightmare — goddamn unsubstantiated expenses. I mean, just how many soft-shelled crabs would I be eating unchecked on the job this time? And then there was the wine … Both men glared at me, at the paper and pen, and back at each other. Wu finally spoke. “Then let's all just hope you don't make it back alive, Cooper.” As they stomped out of my office, Wu slammed the door shut. I almost felt sorry for their next victim.
THIRTY-FOUR
An hour into the seven-hour bus trip south to Fayetteville, North Carolina, I was still staring disbelieving at the acronym soup that were my orders. There were two parts to the mission. The first part was not SPECAT I was to get to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, by 1500 hours the following day, whereupon I was to report to a Major Jay Cummins, B Company, 2d Battalion, 1st SWTG (A) — Special Warfare Training Group (Airborne) — for the purposes of attending MFFPC.
The second part was as vague as only SPECAT orders could be. The paperwork merely said I would be required to attend a JMAP, or Joint Military Appreciation Process, at the successful completion of the MFFPC, at a place and venue TBN. TBN, of course, meant NFI for no fucking idea. Knowing the Air Force, the NFI was as much theirs as mine.
I considered my immediate future, feeling like I'd been sucked into the maw of something carnivorous. MFFPC was the acronym for military free fall parachute course. Specifically, an MFF is conducted from anywhere above 10,000 feet — and sometimes as high as 30,000 feet. In MFF, the paratrooper free-falls — without the parachute deployed — to a specific altitude. The rip cord is then pulled so that the chute opens, ideally within two hundred feet of the designated height. In order to do this, I would be jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, not that there was any such thing. Also, I'd read Have a Nice Flight from cover to cover twice, but I'd failed to locate the chapter covering this particular scenario. I kept telling myself that it wasn't falling I had a problem with; it was crashing. But that didn't seem to help a whole lot. I pulled the book from my carry-on and fed it to a trash can at the Greyhound terminal.
All the way to Fayetteville the differential under my seat whined like a spoiled kid in a candy store. I got about as much sleep as the guy with a head cold sitting across the aisle, which is to say none. I told myself the bus was still better than flying and got no argument.
The weather in Fayetteville when I arrived was cool without being cold, the skies a simpatico gray. The Army shuttle buses out to Bragg were regular but didn't begin till ten a.m., so I found a diner and had breakfast — a double serving of bacon with two eggs, two servings of toast, two cups of black coffee, and a toothpick. The food helped my mood; must have helped the skies too, which were clear and blue by the time I walked back out on the street and took a seat on the service to Bragg.
The bus was empty but for two guys and three women — all 82nd Airborne — coming back from leave. My fellow travelers knew each other and chatted easily. I didn't have to talk to anyone, which suited me fine. The bus meandered through farmland and pine forests. Nothing had changed here in forty years, except maybe for a few more subdivisions.
The base looked like every other one I'd ever seen, seemingly designed by the same slide rule in the Army's planning department. Columns and squares of young men and women sang in cadence while noncoms flogged them through another day designed to make them fit, hard, and willing. I saw myself among them, years younger and dumber, back before Afghanistan and Kosovo when I was on my way to joining the combat controllers. As I remembered it, this place was no picnic. The passage of time had done nothing to make me in the least nostalgic about the physical pain I went through back then to get jump wings. Usually the sight of America's youth muscling up made me feel good, but this time it didn't. This time I knew what lay ahead.